The Riddle Of St Leonard's: An Owen Archer Mystery

by Candace Robb

  ‘None of consequence.’

  She took a deep breath, dabbed her forehead. ‘You caught me just in time.’

  ‘You forget yourself when you are in the shop.’

  Lucie pressed her fingertips to her forehead. ‘You must help Jasper.’

  ‘I shall bring Kate to you, then join Jasper.’

  Lucie touched Owen’s cheek gently with the back of her hand. ‘You found the child, and her family?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Pestilence?’

  Owen nodded. ‘It took four of them. The child is the only one left.’

  Lucie crossed herself. ‘I shall be fine now.’ She began to rise.

  Owen pressed her back down. ‘At least take some water, wait until you are no longer dizzy.’

  ‘In faith, I am weary.’ Lucie leaned back against the tree. ‘They are all mad. Every day new remedies to try. And someone like Mistress Miller must wait among them.’

  ‘She bought scented pouches.’

  ‘Aye. She listened to the chatter whilst she waited.’ Lucie closed her eyes. ‘Poor Harry Miller.’ She chuckled. ‘Poor dog!’

  They laughed so hard that Kate came running to see what was the matter.

  *

  Late that night Lucie and Owen sat up in bed, their glazed window open to the garden. A breeze stirred Lucie’s hair and chilled her shoulders, a relief after the heat of the day. But Owen’s body still radiated heat. Most evenings, Lucie was grateful for her husband’s warmth, but not tonight. She slid away from him.

  ‘Do I smell of the grave?’

  ‘I am warm.’

  ‘I smell of the grave.’

  Lucie turned back to her husband. He was naked, with a light cover on his legs, and he smelled of the lavender and mint bath that she had prescribed to rid all trace of the odours that seemed to haunt him. ‘You smell sweet as the night air in the garden, my love. You are hot is all.’

  Owen took her hand, kissed the palm. ‘What you said this afternoon, about everyone being mad …’

  Lucie slipped down beside him, rested her head on his shoulder. ‘Um.’

  ‘I met a priest today who was as desperate as those waiting in your shop.’

  Lucie stiffened. ‘Out in the country, you mean.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘The country is still safer.’

  ‘I did not mean to question that.’

  ‘Remember the strangers who came down Coney Street last week, crying that the end of the world was at hand? You saw how folk reacted, beating their breasts, some hopping about and howling as if possessed by demons.’ Though the Pope had condemned the flagellants twenty years before, such people quickly gathered a crowd wherever they went, and drew many into their frenzy – and into their despair, which was not easily shaken off. ‘It is like the other times. The madness lingers long after they have passed. Tom says a fight broke out in the tavern that evening. The city is no place for children in such times.’

  ‘I did not say it was.’

  ‘There was no need. You found a family in the country dead of the pestilence, a priest too frightened to do his duty.’

  ‘Fear is everywhere.’

  ‘It is worse in the city.’

  ‘Such folk might pass by Freythorpe Hadden.’

  ‘They might. But they are more likely to come through a city. They want an audience.’

  ‘But still—’

  Lucie turned from Owen, sank down on her pillow.

  ‘I had not meant to begin another argument about the children,’ Owen said.

  Lucie reached back, touched his hand.

  Owen kissed her hand and leaned over her.

  She felt the change in his mood, a sudden urgency. She twisted her neck to see him. ‘Your eye is glinting.’

  ‘Glinting, eh?’ Owen reached up her shift, but Lucie caught his hand. ‘I forgot,’ Owen whispered. ‘I’m too hot.’

  But Lucie had already twisted back towards him. ‘I was not suggesting celibacy for the summer. Though they do say that lying as man and wife opens one’s pores to the pestilential vapours.’

  ‘You believe that?’

  She began to run her hands lightly up and down his chest, his back … ‘I do not know what to think, but I must believe that God does not wish to destroy all our joy or I shall go mad.’

  At dawn, Owen woke to find Lucie sitting up staring at the opposite wall. He wondered whether she thought about her first-born, Martin. But for the pestilence, he would be nine years old now, older than Jasper had been when they’d taken him in.

  Lucie glanced over, saw that Owen was awake. ‘Hugh is so like you.’

  ‘But for the fiery hair. That’s from my brother, Dafydd.’ Owen gathered her in his arms, kissed her forehead. ‘Pray that he has your heart and wit.’

  Lucie pushed him away. ‘I cannot sleep for all my doubts.’ Her voice trembled.

  Owen smoothed her hair from her forehead, kissed it. ‘Naught is certain, my love. But we did what we thought best.’

  Not we, Lucie thought, but I. That haunted her. That and a dream that kept returning. She had had it first on the night before the children had departed. It was of her first husband, Nicholas, and once awake she had not been able to return to sleep. She had peered down into Hugh’s basket. His fine hair was a fiery halo in the moonlight. What she had most wished to do was lift him from his crib and hold him close, whisper how she prayed to see him grow to manhood. But that would have wakened him, and he needed his sleep before the ordeal of travel. How she wished now that she had allowed herself that moment with him.

  The dream was of Nicholas’s terrible silence after their son had died of the pestilence. Night after night after Martin’s death, Nicholas had sat in the garden, beneath the linden tree, with his pale eyes staring at nothing. At such times Nicholas would neither speak to Lucie nor look at her. During the day he was merely civil. And then suddenly, one morning, he had put down his cup of ale and looked Lucie in the eye. ‘I will never forgive you for sleeping the night after Martin died. What made you such an unnatural mother?’

  Lucie had been stunned. Had he forgotten how for three nights while Martin had suffered she had managed little sleep, continually sponging the child’s painful pustules with mallow, trying to draw out the poison, cooling him with cold compresses on his forehead and neck when he’d burned with fever? She had been so weary that she had collapsed when Martin had gone and she had been able to do no more.

  Had Nicholas forgotten that?

  Later he had apologised. Over and over. He had not meant it. It was his grief speaking such hateful things. They were so untrue. She had been the best mother she’d known how to be.

  But what sort of mother would send her children away while she remained in the city to see to her business? Gwenllian and Hugh would be frightened. They needed her. How could she have done this? Was she an unnatural mother?

  Owen broke into her thoughts. ‘They are my children, too, Lucie. If I had been certain that keeping them here was the best thing to do, I would have fought for it.’

  Lucie took a deep breath. In a steadier voice she asked, ‘Have you heard aught from Archbishop Thoresby?’

  ‘Not a word. I imagine him spending the whole day praying in the Queen’s chambers. And praying in his own chamber at night. He has no time to write to his steward.’ Owen was the steward of Bishopthorpe, the archbishop’s manor south of York.

  ‘He will take the Queen’s passing very hard, should it come to that,’ Lucie said.

  ‘There was a time when I would have found a sinful pleasure in that. But now I pity him.’

  ‘… Until you are the butt of his foul humour.’

  ‘Oh aye.’

  ‘You heard about the fire yesterday?’

  ‘Magda smelled it. I feared for you.’

  Lucie touched the back of Owen’s neck. ‘I worried about you on the river.’

  Five

  An Uneasy Conscience

  Comrades on the road, because th
ey are thrown in such intimate company, are away from their regular business, and have time to while away, will oft talk of things they might not otherwise. As Richard de Ravenser dined with his uncle, Archbishop Thoresby, at an inn on their journey to York, the nephew plucked up the courage to ask, ‘What is the trouble between you and Mistress Alice Perrers? Do you— Had you hoped—’ The chill in his uncle’s eyes silenced Ravenser.

  Thoresby speared a piece of meat, chewed, washed it down with wine, then at last leaned on the table with one elbow and looked his nephew in the eye. ‘As the Queen’s man, how can you ask? Every breath Perrers takes near the Queen poisons the air. It has killed her.’

  ‘But surely it is the King who—’

  ‘Hush, you foolish man! That is treasonous talk.’

  Ravenser nervously looked round. ‘That is not in my heart.’

  Thoresby pushed his trencher aside, handed his knife to the servant who stood behind him, and took in turn a linen cloth with which he thoughtfully wiped his lips. ‘Let us turn our minds to something more pleasant. Your troubles in York.’

  ‘I hardly consider them pleasant.’

  ‘Ah. But one might resolve them.’

  ‘How? The revenues from the Petercorn diminish every year. It is not only the bad harvests. The King releases more and more people from the debt.’ Ravenser felt his supper curdling in his stomach just thinking of the nightmare. ‘And then this year you had so generously offered the revenue from the Lammas Fair. Alas. The pestilence has killed that hope.’ He wiped his brow. ‘But worst of it are the corrodians. You know how long I have argued against the sale of corrodies. A quick and fatal source of money. And now my warnings are turned against me.’

  ‘An irony, to be sure. I fear you cannot count on the canons to assure people that you had warned them against corrodies.’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘How did such a rumour begin, Richard? Who spread the news of your financial troubles?’

  The very question Ravenser dreaded. Not that he knew the original source, but he had a suspicion about who had kept the rumour alive. He did not find it easy to lie to his uncle. But he thought it best in the circumstances: the man was dead now; it was best forgotten. ‘Only the canons should have such knowledge.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Thoresby let the word resonate for a moment. Ravenser detected doubt in his tone. ‘Do you trust your canons? You have disagreed with them over the years.’

  A deep breath, steady now. Ravenser would speak only truth. ‘I trust them to understand the importance of St Leonard’s good name. But tongues wag. A servant overhears. Or a corrodian. I have turned people away who wished to purchase corrodies. They do not always understand my position. But you know as well as I that if the people wish to believe rumours, no matter how absurd, there is little one can do to dissuade them.’

  Thoresby signalled his servant to pour wine. ‘I thought perhaps this malicious rumour might have politics as its purpose. But you think not?’ He asked the question in a coaxing tone.

  ‘I wish I knew.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ravenser stared down at his cup. How did his uncle know he had not told him all? He wondered whether his uncle could hear his stomach churning.

  He did not know why he was so hesitant to voice his suspicions, particularly to his uncle, a man of much more experience. The archbishop might suggest a remedy. Or reassure him that his sense of guilt was unfounded. Ravenser lifted his cup, drank. Unwise. He felt his bowels loosen. ‘You must excuse me.’ He rose.

  Thoresby nodded towards the remnants of their meal. ‘Greasy meat. Do you wish for an escort? One of my men—’

  ‘There is no need,’ Ravenser said, and hurried out the back way.

  The episode was enough to convince him he must tell his uncle about a ridiculous argument with William Savage, the late mayor.

  Savage had arrived at their meeting dressed too warmly for the April day, in heavy mayoral robes and hat. A foolish formality in such weather, Ravenser had thought, so no doubt considered necessary to press some point.

  ‘Sir Richard.’ Savage bowed slightly. He was a fair-haired, blue-eyed man with a sanguine complexion, always looking as if he had stayed too long in the sun, even in winter. He was large, but not portly; a man who did justice to the elegant mayoral robes. Ravenser noticed that he clutched a linen cloth in his hand; it would be needed at his brow. ‘God bless you for agreeing to this meeting,’ Savage said. ‘I am most grateful.’

  Had Ravenser had a choice? He had not considered the possibility. ‘Please, put yourself at ease.’ Ravenser indicated a chair by the window. ‘Sit and share some wine.’

  With a flourish of musty robes, Savage sat and dabbed at his forehead.

  When the wine had been poured and the servant dismissed and still the mayor had not declared his purpose, Ravenser inclined his head. ‘Do you come on official business, my lord mayor?’

  Savage set down his cup, his hand and eyes lingering on it momentarily as he collected his thoughts. Then he met Ravenser’s curious gaze. ‘I come on a private matter, Sir Richard. My wife’s mother has recently been widowed, and although we are much concerned for her and wish to ease her through this difficult time, she is in need of more attention than we can give her from day to day.’ The mayor’s expression changed subtly, a raising of the eyebrows, lowering of the corners of the mouth, as if pleading. ‘We hope, indeed we pray that you will accept her as a corrodian of St Leonard’s—’ He held up his gloved hand as Ravenser opened his mouth to speak. ‘We shall pay a fair price, Sir Richard. We should not think of asking favours.’

  Not asking favours. And yet Ravenser knew full well that the Savage house could accommodate another person, and its considerable staff could see to the dowager’s needs. The mayor simply did not wish his wife’s mother to burden them with a long illness. ‘Forgive me, Master Savage, but I must disappoint you. St Leonard’s is no longer selling corrodies.’

  The mayor’s blue eyes narrowed even as his mouth expanded in a smile. He lifted his hands, palms upwards in supplication. ‘But surely, Sir Richard, in certain cases—’

  ‘Again, I must disappoint you. Even His Grace Our King has been refused corrodies for his retainers.’ Ravenser nodded at the surprise registered on his guest’s face. ‘Indeed, you see the firmness of my resolve. It is a matter of survival. The selling of corrodies once seemed a sound financial scheme, but it has proved disastrous. The quality of our care appears to prolong life, you see. And with a corrody being a fixed sum … Well, to be blunt, the corrodians outlive their subsidies and become a burden on the house.’ Even as Ravenser spelled this out he heard his uncle Thoresby’s voice warning him against explaining oneself. Thus is an argument twisted and prolonged.

  Savage sat back, scratched a temple, all the while studying Ravenser with a hardened glint in his eyes.

  Ravenser tried to recoup his loss of ground by declaring the discussion closed. ‘I am pleased that you understand. Was there anything else on your mind?’

  A polite snort. Savage leaned forward. ‘But you are mistaken, Sir Richard, I do not understand. It seems to me there is ample room for one elderly widow who shows no signs of living so long as to burden you, God help her. And as I have said, I am willing to pay reasonably.’

  Ravenser considered what to say. Were he to complete the explanation, and say that accepting one corrodian would open the door to petitions from all over, and, worst of all, would anger the King, and the only way to mend that would be to accept one of his ageing retainers as a corrodian, for which the King rarely paid a fee, though he often promised one, Savage would argue that the King would understand that the needs of the mayor of York should be met. William Savage had never met the King.

  ‘Sir Richard?’ Savage was waiting for more discussion.

  Ravenser shook his head. ‘I cannot make an exception, Master Savage, even for you.’ And each year another mayor. The thought sickened him.

  The mayor’s colour deepened. The musky sce
nt intensified. His chin tilted up, he gazed down his long, bony nose at Ravenser. ‘I suspect that your reasons are not those you offer me.’

  ‘My reasons are not—’ Ravenser heard himself sputtering and shut up. But the audacity of the man! He fought to regain his calm, and in a much softer voice asked, ‘Surely you do not suggest that I am lying?’

  Savage had the grace to squirm – slightly. ‘No. No, I could not in good conscience accuse you of that. But there is another matter that I had hoped to avoid discussing.’

  ‘And what might that be?’

  Savage glanced round the room as if making sure he would not be overheard. ‘It is the matter of a woman you employ as a lay sister. A woman of questionable character. Honoria de Staines.’

  A low blow. ‘Mistress Staines has performed much penance and is one of our best servants.’

  ‘Some would be quite puzzled by that claim, Sir Richard. Quite puzzled.’

  ‘You have reports of her?’

  The mayor smirked. ‘In faith, you cannot be surprised. She has been seen. Even with some of your select number of corrodians.’ He rose, filling the air with musk, bowed slightly to Ravenser, who rose also.

  ‘Can you provide me with proof?’

  Savage sniffed. ‘I shall not betray confidences.’

  ‘Lies, more like.’

  Savage bristled. ‘Have a care, Sir Richard. I know that the hospital is in financial straits because of a shortfall in the Petercorn. If you seek the goodwill of the freemen of the city, you must earn it. By choosing those who work in the hospital with caution. By being a valuable member of the community.’

  Ravenser was finding it difficult to control himself. ‘Would you be so kind as to tell me how you know about our finances?’

  ‘It is all over the city. One need only stand on the street and open one’s ears. I thought it common knowledge.’

  ‘I see.’

  Savage shook his head. ‘I am left to conclude that your rejection of my mother-in-law has more to do with your dread that I might be privy to what happens at St Leonard’s.’

  Ravenser could take no more. ‘Master Savage, it is widely reported that your mother-in-law is a tyrant. You wish to prevent her taking over your household, that is your motivation in trying to bully me into accepting her here.’